Update in the browser wars: If you ain’t Chrome, you ain’t jack

Chrome added nearly 4 percentage points to its user share in July (per Net Applications), ending at 64.7%. The last time a browser owned that large a chunk of the world’s browser market was in late 2009, when IE accounted for two-thirds of the total… Edge remains a flop. In July, just 11.5% of all Windows 10 users relied on Edge, a record low for the long-struggling browser.

Remember that Windows 10 in S Mode only runs Edge. No other choice. And the new, fawned-over Surface Go starts with Win10 Home in S Mode.

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Hey Edge is much better then IE for downloading Chrome! Kidding aside, Edge is actually not a terrible browser, its just nothing special. Mozilla also seems to have missed the boat with Firefox Quantum so Microsoft has plenty of company in the bottom feeders of browsers. Even Safari on Mac and IOS has basically become the Edge of Apple’s ecosystem. Linux desktops also seem to favor Chrome or Chromium over Firefox. I definitely do not want to see one dominate browser again like IE. But I think that has already happened.

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Linux distros will either come with Firefox or Chromium as the installed browser. Chrome will always be user installed. Also, there several browsers based on Chromium and it’s unclear from the post if these are included in the Chrome numbers.

In my case, Edge botched the Chrome browser download. (I wonder if it did so by design.) I figured out that it had changed the extension of the download to _exe instead of .exe. I was wondering why Chrome wouldn’t install, then decided to change the extension to .exe and no problem. This got me wondering, so I attempted to download some other random thing as a test. Edge changed the extension on that download as well.

That was my first and last use of the Edge browser. I tried to give it a fair shot. I didn’t see anything wonderful about the interface and having to inspect download extensions was, well, you know …

I do not believe that was an issue with Edge. I have had that a number of times with both IE and Firefox, as well as Safari. I believe it has to do with the download server load or corruption during the download process.

Sometimes just changing the extension works, but other times is will not run and says a component is missing or corrupt. Trying a download again later usually works.

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That’s a bit disheartening. They try so avidly to keep you on Edge. I counted three different junctions where they present data claiming that edge is faster, more secure, and more optimal. What a joke!

I’m glad that others prefer a different browser than I do (Pale Moon with uBlock and uMatrix add-ons). Shunning the mainstream can place you in an improved security situation if for no other reason than it’s better to not be the biggest target for attack.

No doubt some of this adoption has to do with the annoying pop up (Would you like to install chrome? Want a faster way to explore the web? blah,blah,blah) if you use google as your main search engine. Some just install it to get Google to shut up about it already.

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@istech:you are probably right about this. I hate to say this, and I don’t mean to be callous, but those who “install Chrome to get Google to shut up” don’t deserve any better treatment than they are getting because they take the easy way out without bothering to investigate what other options there are.

It’s like letting a thief into your house to get him to stop burgling you.

1x Linux Mint 19.1 | 1x Linux antiX

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Klaas Vaak, your position on the worthiness of giving up is reasonable. But I believe the direction of your comment is the opposite of jstech’s original intention.
Where you concentrate on the fate of the unworthy user, jstech notes that disreputable marketing efforts really don’t care about the user. The point of opt-out marketing is to inflate statistics beyond a reasonable and accurate count of users who actively sought out the product.

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@anonymous: I am aware of the underhand marketing techniques, and I did not mean to classify anyone as unworthy because, after all, who am I to put a “value” on people.

That said, I understand people just want to buy their machine, switch it on and start surfing without bothering with the details under the hood. I understand that too: you don’t want to know how an engine works and still drive your car.

But when you walk into a car dealer’s you are also aware that he is trying to sell you a car by listing all the positives about it, so you are alert and maybe check out a few of his claims.

Similarly, when an app or a website that pushes Chrome, or any other product, why would someone just accept that and not look/enquire a bit further? If you accept the car dealer’s word for everything then don’t be surprised if you have some unpleasant surprises.

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I still agree with your rephrased advice for the unwary, caveat emptor. I only noted that it was not the direction that I first read jstech had intended.

I had inferred that there may be a set of knowledgeable, yet frustrated, users who passively allowed (by not actively opting-out) the installation to occur. It remains possible that I have misread intent.

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It is configured the way I want it, and does what I want… not what data harvesters want… but it is detected as Firefox, rather than as its own updated fork.

There are ways to change the user agent? Not sure if that is the correct term, but so that the browser looks like another type of browser… Don’t think that the actual browser is detected? There is a privacy fingerprinting advantage to looking like a commonly used browser…

There are people using chromium, or browser versions based on chromium, rather than Chrome… trying to avoid Google’s data mining… these show up as Chrome, again, with no way to differentiate as to the actual browser. Chromium is the open source browser that Chrome is based on?

There are a lot of browsers out there, for those that want options…

Win 7 Home, 64 bit, Group B

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Not surprised by Firefox’s continued slide. Quantum killing off the XUL/XPCOM add-on ecosystem really was the final straw for people. People either went to Chrome after all, where the WebExtensions were already mature, or to Firefox forks that don’t necessarily report as Firefox.

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Not surprised by Firefox’s continued slide. Quantum killing off the XUL/XPCOM add-on ecosystem really was the final straw for people. People either went to Chrome after all, where the WebExtensions were already mature, or to Firefox forks that don’t necessarily report as Firefox.

Nor am I. It has been a fool’s errand to try to out-Chrome the actual Chrome from the start. So many times I’ve noticed some thing that was removed from Firefox, and when I look at the discussion about the issue, it so often was “that’s how Chrome does it.”

There was a message on some Firefox forum (I do not remember which… may have been the Reddit one) where someone asked for some help with Waterfox something or other, and one of the Mozilla employees told him to stop using “unauthorized” forks and just adapt to Firefox.

I don’t know about that person, but in my computer, the program adapts to me, not me to it.

The person responded that he doesn’t want to give up his powerful addon(s), and the Moz person remarked that the future is Webextensions, and that no major browser out there uses anything like what the Firefox addons used to be like. Firefox was always unique in that way– the reason no major browser does it that way was because the only one that had that feature decided to go follow the crowd! It reminds me of the story of the person convicted of murdering his parents asking for mercy in the sentencing phase because he’s an orphan.

Mozilla reminds me of a mini Microsoft in a lot of ways. Firefox’s latest release took out another feature I use a lot. There’s no such thing as a tab state “unread” anymore. The way that I browse is to launch new background tabs each time I come to a link that I might be interested in reading. I have long had an addon to color those unread tabs yellow, making them easy to spot after I finish the original page that contained the links.

Now that unread state is no more, so those tabs just look like all the others. I keep a lot of tabs open, and using the color codes in Classic Theme Restorer or Tab Mix Plus is one way I keep track of them. It’s such a tiny little feature, but now it’s gone, and there are and will be no more addons to fix the Mozilla errors this time. I probably have as many addons installed to fix various Mozilla blunders as I do truly custom ones, as Moz has been doing this kind of thing for years. Now, though, the addons are too weak to do anything like that, and Mozilla’s response is to tell the user to adapt.

There are a lot of parallels between Mozilla and Microsoft. Arrogance, expectations that the user adapt to them rather than the other way around, removing useful features left and right, while addind new ones that no one wants… sometimes I wonder if Mozilla really wants to keep developing Firefox at all, or if they are just trying to kill it off… much the same way as I ask the same about Microsoft.

FWIW, I won’t be following Mozilla’s command to use Firefox and adapt. I use Waterfox, and if that disappeared, it would be Basilisk perhaps, and if not that, Pale Moon.

Wish I knew how to start a new topic here. Instead, maybe someone will pick up on this. Chrome updated itself today to version 68. They screwed up the bookmark manager. The old version was ok, not great. But very utilitarian – certainly not broke, and NOT in need of changing.

The new Chrome bookmark manager is practically worthless. They have changed the spacing between bookmarks to an ungainly amount – reducing the number of bookmarks in view on a given page by roughly half. That means more than twice the amount of scrolling to reach your target bookmark. No way to change. The right click menu has Edit as the first choice. It isn’t until the fourth that you have the option to open a page in a new tab or fifth, in a new window. That choice comes right after the choice to delete the bookmark. That’s right – you get the choice to delete before opening the bookmark. I do that often – right?

Why do software developers change what doesn’t need changing, leaving no option for both – old and new?

Man these guys bug me. Anybody have any recommendations for my next browser? And don’t suggest anything made by MS.

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And from what I’ve seen, it lacks the things that are actually good about IE, including quite a bit of detailed configurability

+1

Exactly right. It will never cease to amaze me that MS is choosing to kill off Internet Explorer, a browser that over the years has (been) developed into a pretty decent browsing option, in favor of Edge.

I currently am on Firefox 52 ESR, but when the ESR comes to EOL will probably have to make a switch (currently thinking PaleMoon). Should note that ever since IBM dropped their in-house browser in OS/2 for Netscape Navigator I have been on that browse platform, through its various iterations.

Chrome is so often inadvertently installed by default, as an opt out feature, during an install or update of another program eg Avast Free Antivirus and many many others. Many people have Chrome installed this way and are not aware of the change or do not know how to undo the install. The figures are not really valid when this sort of thing goes on.

I have Firefox and am happy with it, but I have to be careful all the time as Chrome comes along for the ride quite often.

mbhelwig

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Currently, and for some time already, I have IE 11, Firefox, Waterfox and Chrome installed in my Windows PC and also all of the above, except for Safari instead of IE 11, in my Mac. Of all these, IE 11 and Chrome are useful for certain tasks, and Waterfox is my default in the PC and the Mac, because I like it best for the way it works for me for most things. Pale Moon only works with Windows, so I am not thinking of installing it, as with what I have already in my PC seems quite sufficient. Chrome is one of the “officially accepted” browsers at my bank for on-line access to my accounts, along with IE 11, so for me it has its uses. Also, someone here has mentioned that there is a problem using Chrome, with advertising. I have not seen that, perhaps because I use an ad blocker?

I am disappointed with Firefox Quantum, as it is less functional, from my point of view, than the version it replaced, so it is installed, but not in use, although I keep updating it, just in case.

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I had always been a Firefox fan. I was able to configure it just how I liked it. When Firefox Quantum came on the scene (making most of my extensions useless), I delayed upgrading for a long time while I tried out Waterfox and Pale Moon. I finally settled on Pale Moon and used that for a long time.

However, Pale Moon has one serious drawback for me – none of the mainstream password managers that I have tried recognise it or work with it (despite its Firefox heritage). I have tried RoboForm, LastPass and Dashlane (the latter is currently my preferred tool). I use unique, complex passwords for best security, so a password manager is essential. Eventually I got over having to cut and paste passwords from a password manager’s vault into the browser. So I decided to bite the bullet and go back to Firefox Quantum. I have now adjusted to the new screen format and limitations. Some of my old extensions have been upgraded to work with it (though not always as well as before), but now I seem to have a new problem.

I haven’t heard this problem being reported by anyone else, so maybe it is specific to my setup. Very quickly after starting Firefox, memory usage ramps up – as seen in Task Manager (I have Windows 7 Pro 64). Spread over some seven different tasks à la Chrome (the old Firefox opened just one task), memory usage in one of these gets up to over 1.5 GB and eventually the machine starts thrashing (I have 8 GB RAM) or Firefox crashes. Shutting down and restarting Firefox resolves the problem – for a while.

I thought it might be a memory leak in one of the extensions, so I started in safe mode. Memory usage still ramped up, albeit not as quickly. I have also noticed that if I let it go for as long as possible, the memory usage will drop down of its own accord to around 800 MB before starting up the ladder again, not something I would expect from a memory leak.

BTW, I have some 20 pinned tabs for URLs I use all the time (including this one 🙂 ).

So: 1) does anyone know of a decent password manager that will function fully with Pale Moon and other boutique browsers? and 2) has anyone seen memory usage problems of the sort described with Firefox Quantum (and know of, or be able to suggest, a solution)?

Any ideas greatly appreciated!

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Waterfox has a password manager built in, or something that works like that. When I open a connection to some site that requires a login with user ID and a password, a pop-up box opens with the options to remember the login sequence for that site, or not. If I choose to “remember, whenever afterwards I set up a connection to that site, the user ID and password are already filled in and all is ready to click “OK” and get successfully connected without further fuss. Chrome works the same way, from my point of view at least. I only fill in the fields relying on my memory, or use cut and paste, for the more sensitive Web connections, such as to my bank and my accounts in it.

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As I recall, old Firefox had a rudimentary password manager built in, however it was generally regarded as not very secure. Which is why I upgraded to a specialist password manager (RoboForm was considered the best at the time – cost USD $30 in 2010). I just checked that Firefox still has its password manager, so do both Pale Moon and Waterfox – I assume that the latter two inherited it from FF. Maybe the security of these features has improved over the last eight years, although when the merits of password managers are discussed I don’t recall any built-in browser managers being mentioned.

Having paid for RF all those years ago, I still keep it around and it is still OK. I have since installed LastPass and Dashlane, both of which are free (for personal use at least). Dashlane is particularly good (LastPass not so much IMO). However, RF has a feature I haven’t seen in the others – it can be used to log in to applications as well as websites (for example VeraCrypt containers).

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As I recall, old Firefox had a rudimentary password manager built in, however it was generally regarded as not very secure.

I think you are probably talking about the single-pass SHA1 cipher FF uses to encrypt the password store (using the salted master password hash as a key). It’s true that it is pretty flimsy protection by today’s standards, and if you’re relying on the encryption from the master password feature to resist brute force attacks if someone were to get ahold of the computer, it’s not the best choice.

I still use it, though (the password managers I use still use the default password store of FF/WF), since I don’t rely on the master password encryption on my more theft-prone laptops. I use SED (self-encrypting drive) features on both of my main laptops to protect the entire SSD contents, including the Firefox profile directory. On my Dell laptop, I use the Linux ecryptfs to encrypt the /home directory (which also happens to be on a removable microSD, so it’s even more important).

On the desktop, I do use a master password in Firefox. It’s a very long one that is a real pain to type in, which greatly increases the security of the weak cipher, though it’s still computationally cheap to brute force single-pass SHA1 than it should be.

Given that my desktop PC is a full-size tower that is very heavy, it’s a lot less likely to be stolen than my laptops. Now that I am thinking of it, though, I probably should work on a better solution than that.

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1) does anyone know of a decent password manager that will function fully with Pale Moon and other boutique browsers?

It’s been a while since I used Pale Moon, but I do know that a lot of my usual addons that didn’t work initially with PM did work when installed with one of the addons in the Pale Moon repository, called the Moon Tester or some thing like that (yes, it is an addon that installs other addons). I can’t remember exactly, but the PM repo isn’t that big, and it will allow you to install a much greater percentage of FF addons.

I use QuickPasswords and Saved Password Editor in Waterfox. They both work quite well.

2) has anyone seen memory usage problems of the sort described with Firefox Quantum?

I don’t use FF Quantum, but Waterfox seems to have developed the same issue in its last release (56.2.2). I suspect some of the bugfix code that was backported from FF to WF contains the cause of the leak.

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Re Moon Tester Tool: Thanks for reminding me about this. I glossed over this when I first started using PM and then forgot about it. I will look into it when I get time.

Re Memory Usage: I checked memory usage in Task Manager while I was checking out password management in Pale Moon and Waterfox. Both of the latter operate with a single task as FF used to, rather than the plethora of tasks in FF Quantum and Chrome. However I was shocked to see that both PM and WF had memory usage of over 2.2 GB (and they were just sitting idle). That’s more than 25% of my installed RAM, and is comparable to FF Q when you add up the usage in all of the separate FF tasks. So maybe I have a particular problem with my system if others don’t see this.

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@lh: for password manager I suggest the excellent, open source KeePass. It works with PM too.

As for FF’s memory usage, Mozilla refuse to accept it is a problem, and always suggest workarounds. Waterfox, though an excellent browser, does have an increasing memory usage too. There is a tool for this: Firemin. Works for FF, but it can be amended easily for other browsers, and other memory guzzling apps cn be added. I have been using it for a few weeks now and am very happy with it.

1x Linux Mint 19.1 | 1x Linux antiX

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FF has long had an issue with not releasing all of the memory once the tabs were closed, but ever since the most recent WF was released (which, of course, is a Firefox derivative), it’s gotten worse. It used to use memory each time a new tab was added, then only giving about half of it back if the tab were then closed. If no new tabs were being opened, the RAM usage remained about the same.

Now it gradually but continuously increases its RAM usage even with the same tabs open. It’s gotten to 14 GB of RAM used twice in the last week or so (on my desktop with 16 GB). Unfortunately, I will not be able to try FireMin, as I am using Linux, and it’s a Windows program.

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From what I read, Firemin repeatedly fires some kind of a Windows API to prompt a memory release within a given process, which is Firefox in this case (the interval being selectable by the user). This API is a Windows API, so for it to work, I’m pretty sure you’d have to be using Windows Firefox within WINE also. I don’t know if that would be one of the APIs not yet implemented in WINE, so I don’t know how well it would work.

You could also run Firemin within a VM alongside Firefox. It’s still a kludge, though; the real solution is for Firefox clean up its act, if it is truly within FF itself, as it seems to be, though I cannot say for sure it’s not addons. I haven’t tested without them.

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2) has anyone seen memory usage problems of the sort described with Firefox Quantum (and know of, or be able to suggest, a solution)?

Some time ago, there was some concern with FF starting at a minimum 3 separate processes when it started up, even to a blank page and only one tab open. Each one of these processes consumed a sizable amount of system memory, so a “workaround” was found to keep FF from doing this. I had it happen to me, so I decided to implement the workaround, and haven’t looked back!

The workaround involves modifying a setting or two within the browser through the about:config page. Just type about:config into the address bar to get there. You’ll probably be presented with a warning about modifying settings being dangerous, etc. Click on “I accept the risk” and you’re in.

Now that you’re here, you’ll notice a search bar just below the bookmarks toolbar. Type the name of the following into the search bar to bring up the preference(s) you need to change. In this case, type in “browser.tabs.remote.autostart” (without the quotes, of course). This should bring up either one or two listings, one of them just as you typed, and the other one ending with “.2”. Yes, there are periods between each word or other modifier. Don’t worry if only one listing shows up instead of two, as that can happen depending on how long you’ve had FF and how long it’s been upgraded from earlier versions to subsequent versions.

You need to change the preference’s setting to “false”. To do so, just double click the setting’s name and it will automatically change from “true” to “false”, and it may change into bold type as well. It’s status may also change from “default” to “modified”. If you have two settings listed exactly as described above, change them both.

Once you’ve done this, exit FF, and use the Task Manager to ensure that all FF threads or instances have closed, so it’s not using any more memory. Once you’ve verified it’s not using any more memory, relaunch it as you normally would. You should now notice only one instance of FF listed in Task Manager, and hopefully your memory issues will be a thing of the past.

I hope this helps! FWIW, my system “only” has 4 gigs of RAM with Win7 x64.

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Thank You Bob99 ! I have Firefox 61.0.1 and with only 4 tabs open I had 6 Process instances of Firefox showing in the Task Manager. I followed your instructions – about:config – then – browser.tabs.remote.autostart, double clicked to change both (.2) to false, and after re-starting Firefox, it started with 2 Process instances, but after watching for about 2 minutes, it dropped down to 1 Firefox process, and stayed there for 40 minutes of browsing with up to 8 tabs open. So again, I thank you for the education and instructions. Works for me. YMMV (?)

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Also my experience! I made the about:config changes referred to and got the same result: initially only two processes briefly, then only one. The memory size of the one process still got up around 1.6 GB, the same as the largest of the previous seven processes – but the other six processes amounted to a few gigabytes on their own, so overall a significant cut in memory usage. And it is easier to follow FF in Task Manager when it has only one process.

It would be interesting to know: if you can run FF in one process (as in older FF versions), why does Mozilla now run it using up to seven processes (other than copy-catting Chrome)? Is there some advantage? What is the trade-off in switching back to one process? One wonders …

After gaining some memory back with the above change, I downloaded and installed Firemin as recommended by several posters. What a difference! FF memory usage has dropped from around 1.6 GB to less than 100 MB! (Using the default 500 ms frequency.) Much of the time FF memory usage is less than that of Firemin itself at 31 MB. If fixing the memory leakage is so simple, one wonders why Mozilla hasn’t used the same Windows API (but possibly because FF is largely platform independent and the API is specific to Windows?).

Anyway, thanks again to all who made these suggestions. Overall memory usage of my 8 GB desktop has dropped from 80%+ to less than 50%, and performance has improved correspondingly.

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Further to my #208799, I have run successfully for a couple of days after installing Firemin. I had it set up to autostart at boot time (so I wouldn’t forget). Then after a couple of days, I had occasion to shut down and restart the PC. Startup was very slow – in fact I am not sure it ever fully started. When I tried to start Firefox, Windows Firewall blocked it (I have never seen that before). I overrode the block and FF started. However, some websites just displayed a blank page. And I could not get the password manager Dashlane to start at all – at least not its display window (according to Task Manager it was running). The only thing new since the previous boot was the installation of Firemin (and the toggling of the two flags in about:config).

So I opened up the Firemin options and reset the flag to prevent autostart of Firemin at boot time, then restarted. It booted normally. No firewall blocks, Dashlane started normally, and FF is running normally (and back to its old tricks of chewing up memory at an alarming rate!). With everything running OK, I started Firemin manually – it is now doing its job and everything else still seems OK.

Of course one instance of rebooting with Firemin autostart is not conclusive – it could just be a coincidence that something else went wrong at that time. I will have to repeat this whole process to be sure, not something I have time to do right now. Wondering if anyone else has seen this with autostart of Firemin at boot?

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@lh: I had been running Firemin successfully for a couple of weeks with manual start-up. Today I decided to check the start-up with Windows option, but after reading your comment I decided to switch back to manual start-up without going through the kind of tribulations you went through. So, many thanks for your feedback.

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Okay this multiple process function for Firefox, Waterfox & possibly other Mozilla based browsers is not a bad thing to have as one process can crash while the browser continues to run. The newer dedicated content rendering process was to help separate out some functions as a way to optimize Firefox.

When Firefox is all in one process an unrecoverable error will crash it ruining all tabs.

I am wondering if the poorer memory use is contributed by add-ons & such, yes I also realize Firefox throughout its existence has never had the best memory management. There mention of perhaps a new patch may be at fault…

Another point is that extended Facebook sessions can easily consume over time 1.2 GB of memory. So something to observe with task manager is the effects of certain resource intensive domains throughout the day.

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It would be interesting to know: if you can run FF in one process (as in older FF versions), why does Mozilla now run it using up to seven processes (other than copy-catting Chrome)? Is there some advantage? What is the trade-off in switching back to one process? One wonders …

The effort to break Firefox into multiple processes was called Electrolysis, or E10s. Having everything in one process means that long operations on the rendering thread can block the UI briefly, causing a noticeable pause or stutter. You see this in the overall responsiveness and the level of “jank” in the system. Single-process Firefox is not great at scrolling smoothly, and if a single tab freezes, it can make the whole thing unresponsive for several seconds at a time.

There’s a little more overhead involved with having more processes, but it’s not huge. On my 4GB RAM Swift, I tested Waterfox with various numbers of processes. With a given set of tabs open, having one content process (in addition to the main process) used 1.4 GB. Each process I added increased the total by another 0.1 GB, with five of them using 1.8 GB.

After trying this out, I ended up settling on 5 content processes (plus the main process), even though the little laptop is kind of short on memory with only 4 GB (non-upgradeable). It was noticeably more responsive with more of them, and the extra 400 MB is not going to be enough to help much when it starts leaking memory. It may also be easier for the system to page out the background tabs with multiple processes, though I don’t really know if that makes any difference.

When you have memory leaks, no amount of memory is enough. Waterfox has climbed to 14GB on my desktop numerous times lately. The more you have, the more it swallows! Small savings here and there are not going to solve it– the leak has to be fixed.

I suggest that people try different numbers of processes and see how it responds over time more than worrying about it one megabyte at a time. The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

Group "L" (KDE Neon User Edition 5.15.3 & Kubuntu 18.04).

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I found going to one process made the browser slower and far less responsive, especially for video playback. I have 12 GB of RAM so letting FF grab more in 4-6 processes is fine with me. I also use a container extension so that probably is also grabbing dedicated RAM.

I tested Waterfox with various numbers of processes. With a given set of tabs open, having one content process (in addition to the main process) used 1.4 GB. Each process I added increased the total by another 0.1 GB, with five of them using 1.8 GB. After trying this out, I ended up settling on 5 content processes (plus the main process)

I wasn’t aware that you could specify the number of processes used. How do you do that? Is it only doable in Waterfox or also in Firefox?

There is a welcome side effect to this “browser.tabs.remote.autostart” tweak if like me you normally run Firefox inside a Sandboxie sandbox for added protection. I had found that I was unable to get audio from web-pages e.g. YouTube when running Firefox Quantum soon after its release in Sandboxie and the online suggestions at that time (reducing some protection level if I remember correctly?) fixed the problem for me. (I switched to Pale Moon inside Sandboxie when needing online audio as a work-around.) I stumbled upon this fix a few months later and it restored online audio via Firefox Quantum running in Sandboxie. This worked for me in both Windows 7 and 8.1.

Another possible welcome side-effect is that it may(?) have restored my ability to use the CutePDF printer to print contents of a webpage to a .pdf file from Firefox run in Sandboxie when run in Windows 8.1 ( I did not have this problem in Windows 7). I have recently discovered that this is now possible again and I do not know what has changed to allow it. I do not print to a PDF file in W8.1 often so I do not know when this functionality came back or why. I don’t have access to my W8.1 PC at present so I cannot confirm this theory and this is speculative (the audio fix above is definate).

It certainly could, and I believe the originator of that AKB article is @microfix .

He would probably be the best one to incorporate this setting into the article if he felt it worthy of inclusion, due to possible side effects for some folks that neither he nor I have personally observed yet. This setting could havepossibly played a role in @lh ‘s recent issues described in post 209074, for example.

I really like Opera. It runs very well on Win 7, MacOS High Sierra, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It wasn’t mentioned in Keizer’s article and doesn’t seem very popular here at AskWoody. I have noticed that Gunter Born uses it a lot in his screen captures.

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Indeed. No confidence in any of those. 😉 Using the least obnoxious, Firefox ESR with Noscript running through KIS 2018. Maybe OK since there are no state secrets on this machine and Eugene can’t afford to lose any more clients…

The Reuters article strikes me as a superficial review of privacy concerns that probably most of AskWoody readers have. But it doesn’t seem to say anything about the Chinese other than that a Chinese consortium now owns Opera Software.

I was hoping folks here would address the technical qualities of the Opera browser, and perhaps why they thought it has so few users, etc.

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I use SuperGenPass with Palemoon Set it up as a bookmarklet, configure and then just use a master password & sync to share across multiple devices. It also works in Firefox if you prefer, and there is a mobile version for Android phones

SuperGenPass uses your master password and the domain name to generate a password. If any of those 2 change by even 1 character, the password changes. Great, so what happen if you want to change your master password because someone stole yours? All your passwords are lost.

What happens if the website decides to make a change to its domain name, or moves to another domain? Exactly, all your passwords are lost.

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In SGC, you can choose as the default setting to ignore subdomains. That takes care of small changes.

If the top level domain also changes, then you need to go to SGC and ‘regenerate’ the password using the old domain name. Your in-built password manager should subsequently save it for the new domain.

If someone steals your master password, you will likely have to go through all your saved passwords in the editable password manager (like the one in Palemoon) and update them one by one with those generated with the new master password.

As with everything, you should have the bookmarklet backed up.

The mobile version (and the previous one on their website) also allowed for salt to be set, so theoretically if you were to modify that, then you can continue using the same master phrase.

I’m not sure how this is any different in any other password manager? That is, if the top level domain changes or you forget how to get in in the first place?

@anonymous: I don’t know enough about SGP to have a useful discussion, I just mentioned a few things that came to mind. The website only has a few FAQs that have a distinct marketing angle, and the FAQ list is very limited. In any case, on the website I did not find a manual or a set of sensible, detailed instructions as to how to use the program.

As for my password manager, KeePass, I believe it is one of the best ones out there, it was even audited a few years ago for use by EU officials. I have been using it for 8-10 years and have never had any problems with it. I do make a paper copy of the passwords for 2 reasons:

1. In case something happens and I lose the use of KP, even if only temporarily

2. Sometimes a website does not accept copy/paste of a password, only a manual typing. In that case I need to have the password handy. From what I understand, it is not possible to do that with SGP. Again, I may be wrong and there might be a workaround, but it is not evident from the website.

With all respect to Chrome users and without judging anyone for their choice, I would like to know why do you use Chrome instead of Firefox or one of the forks if you have privacy concerns and you worry about Microsoft slurping your data, storing it and using it.

To me, I never investigated to which extent Chrome slurps data, like I never used Google desktop although I found the idea great at the time and I still find Chrome technically interesting, going in a much different direction than Microsoft at first to go away from stupid ideas like ActiveX and pushing simplification instead of useless bloat, more security risks and more tweaking needed. I liked the idea of Chrome, the strength of Google in pushing the right priorities for a browser like sandboxing and auto flash update at a time where Microsoft was pushing compatibility issues between different versions of IE and more security problems. But I valued my privacy over that and I found Firefox good enough, although it could have been better on this security front, but even then less bad than a non tweaked IE. The thing is Windows search appeared and it filled my needs ok enough so I also never used Google Desktop, but I never planned to use it either for the same privacy concerns. Firefox was also there at the time of Chrome and it satisfied me very well and it still does.

So I am asking, respectfully, to those who worry about privacy invading features of Windows 10 and Microsoft in general, if you use Chrome, why do you do it? What makes it worthwhile that much, or why privacy concerns over it are not a big deal. Clearly, Chrome is very popular. As I don’t and none of my users suffer from issues using Firefox except on very few web sites, I am still wondering why Chrome would be so popular, even in business, if privacy concerns have any value. Again, I didn’t research the topic so maybe it isn’t a big deal, but I suppose also lots of people who worry or not about those things sometimes choose to not research a topic and just not hop on the wagon, like me. So, I am just curious, to understand what people think, here?

Lastly, I have nothing against Chrome, it is certainly a great product. But I also like encouraging open source efforts that explicitly makes privacy one of their most important part of their mission. I want the world to see there is a demand for that kind of product and I feel sad when I see the market share shrink so I feel I do my part when I contribute to statistics for some organization that clearly states privacy as a top priority.

Yes, some might bring a few things that triggered people about privacy and Firefox like for using third-party to filter bad sites. I don’t think that at least for some I have seen, they have done it on purpose to make money and compromise your privacy knowingly, maybe they could have been clearer about it, but I don’t perceive any ill intention on their part and they still give more control about privacy.

I thought for a while they went in a bad direction with UI changes to copy Chrome and a bit more bloat, but in the last two years or even more, I like what they do in general. The only little annoyances they added are also easy to remove. In my mind, they are still one of the less evil out there. Am I living on another planet?

Lastly, yes I trust Google much more with my data than Microsoft, but I still don’t want to give my data to any of them.

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I’ve often wondered these same things. I personally just don’t like Chrome, but even if I did, I don’t think I’d use it because of privacy issues and Google. Similarly, I really like the idea of a chromebook – if I could get one that printed locally to my own usb connected printer – but it seems that with Google browser and operating system there would again be massive privacy issues. I’d be very interested in what folks with more technical chops than I have think about this; or in other words why do you use Chrome and/or chromebooks in light of privacy concerns?

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“I really like the idea of a chromebook – if I could get one that printed locally to my own usb connected printer”

Excerpt from link below.
Step 2: Download the Extension

HP took the lead in offering Chromebook users an extension to allow USB printing. Other printer manufacturers have since followed, although not all printers are supported. Simply head over to the Chrome web store and search for your printer manufacturer. Download and install the relevant extension on your Chromebook. You may need to restart Chrome; if this is required, you’ll be given a message on-screen.

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Another perspective, you are at the mercy of what the software developers design the website to work with. At my company we have a specialty cloud-based software that the recommended browser is Chrome. The software can be used in other browsers to a point, but certain functions break or do not work at all unless you use the recommended browser.

Group A | Windows 7 Pro 64-bit | Windows 10 Pro 1809 64-bit

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Thanks for asking. I use Chrome because of the User Interface. I like it. It works for me. I made the calculation that the productivity gain outweighed the privacy issue. That’s why I also use Office 2003. Don’t like the ribbon. Go figure.

That’s also why I don’t like WinX (I use 1511 – still!). I use WinX because I have to. I use it despite the dings to my productivity from a non-logical user interface. And I reserve the right to evaluate the logic of the UI on my own values. WinX just doesn’t sing. In fact, it sings off key more and more correlated strongly to its updates and bug-modification releases.

Call me weird, I want a simple computing device that facilitates work and internet access. I want a platform that works for me, not for MS. Google manages to keep Chrome’s snooping out of the way – it’s part of the bargain. And I can opt out simply by installing another browser. Can’t readily do that with my current OS. And note that I said ‘facilitate’ in contrast with dictate, regulate, or participate. Just sell me something that works and say goodbye until next time I need something.

P.S. Chrome may have just screwed up in v68. They went and changed the bookmark manager for no good reason. New manager is ugly, spacing is all wrong. It just doesn’t sing. Alas.

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I had initially set up my pixel book to print through Google cloud print but found that took too many steps and I didn’t feel comfortable running every document that I wanted to print through their servers. I found the HP print app and I have it on my pixel book iPad and iPhone and can print directly (via my home wireless network) to the printer with no problems.

For me, the main reason for using Chrome is that, in my Mac, I do not have IE11, and along with IE11, Chrome is the other browser my bank accepts for online banking transactions.

I have Chrome also installed on my PC: it is there because I wanted to experiment a bit with different browsers. I do not use it that much, as I prefer Waterfox (now my default browser in the Mac and the PC), mainly on the basis that no, or even less, spying on me is better than a lot. But I turn Chrome on now and then, all the same, to let it update itself.

I’d be pretty annoyed too. In fact I AM pretty annoyed. Of the handful of financial sites I have to deal with they all say that the supported browsers are IE11, Edge, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, and not all say Firefox. On the other hand I’ve tried Opera on an iMAC and Firefox on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and they both seem to work fine, although a couple sites asked for additional verification before I got in when using Firefox on Ubuntu.

My bank considers Chrome and IE11 “supported browsers” and if I use Waterfox, for example, the bank’s page shows an angry red strip at the very top telling me that I am “using an unsupported browser”, but lets me get on with my business anyway. And I can close that red strip if I feel like it, so no big deal. Nevertheless, I assume that there might be some reason for the “supported browser” business, so I prefer to use those two when accessing my bank online. So far, nothing horrible has happened to me. I pinky-swear to let you know if it does.

[rant on] The Google PR bandwagon has won over many users due to the success of their search engine at the beginning of the century and the advent of social media later with constant pop-ups to install on-line, program set-up execution files laced with hidden (easy to miss) opt-outs at the cost of your privacy with the potential haven of better browser security and faster page loading.[rant off]

I can think of clients who, when asked, why do you have three browsers?

The most common answer are:

‘it just appeared on my PC when I installed…’

‘I was told it was the best by a friend on facebook’

‘I looked it up on the search engine’ ROTFL (guess which search engine..)

Each to their own but, hey, the underhanded means of putting anything on a PC these days leaves a lot to be desired. What I learned from this many moons ago, was to do a ‘custom install’ for everything on a PC

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Information Alert, the tin foil hats will be optional this time. This mostly is about the privacy concerns in Firefox based browsers such as Pale Moon, and others. Everyone has to make choices and decisions, so the more information the better. In My Opinion anyway.

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Maybe some possible useful information about Google Chrome chrome://pages adjustments, mostly for developers. I did not see anything for adjusting Privacy or Telemetry settings. Therefore, everyone consider re-installing those Tin Foil Hats as necessary.

Are you not using the portable version? Portable here. Only problem I had was related to “reduce memory” frequency of 500ms (default). @Klaas Vaak recommended 600,000ms (10 min interval) and that seemed to work.

I have downloaded and tested both installed and portable versions. Not sure I can detect any difference. I was running on the installed version (set to autostart with Windows) when I struck the problems when rebooting. How would doing the same with the portable version make it different?

I initially ran with the default frequency of 500 ms to see how it went before changing anything. It seemed logical that running the API twice a second would introduce noticeable overhead, but I was surprised to find that any overhead was undetectable. So for now I have left the default setting. It certainly keeps memory usage down. What was the problem that you had with this parameter?

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“How would doing the same with the portable version make it different?”

Don’t know. Just a thought.

“I initially ran with the default frequency of 500 ms to see how it went before changing anything. It seemed logical that running the API twice a second would introduce noticeable overhead, but I was surprised to find that any overhead was undetectable. So for now I have left the default setting. It certainly keeps memory usage down. What was the problem that you had with this parameter?”

and he also mentioned that a manual launch of Firemin gives no problems. It is not clear from your reply whether you still have those problems, but I can confirm LH’s comment that a manual launch gives no problems. I launch Firemin manually every day and have had no problems. I have not tried to have Firemin launched with the Windows start-up, but your and LH’s experience are enough for me not to try it out 😉

@hiflyer: nowadays I always use the portable version if there is one available. There is a portable version for Firemin, and I use it. I have not had any probs with it. I have configured it to start with Windows, and there is an option to start Firefox (Waterfox in my case) when Firemin starts – I have checked that box.

I have set Firemin to reduce WF’s memory footprint every 10 mins, so now it does not get above 700 Mb anymore, whereas before it would get up to 1.2 Gb.

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Yes Chrome is tuned to my liking. I even turn Javascript off by default with all privacy settings set to block, and Adblock and site isolation set. Also no 3rd party cookies.
These are from the top of my head but for me it is secure.

I started doing this little “trick” back when I had FF45 or about that time (42-45/46 ish). After applying the “fix” and subsequently updating to the next version a couple of weeks later, I noticed there was another instance of the aforementioned preference in the config file. I also noticed FF was back to using two to four processes at any one time. So, I changed the second (remote.autostart.2) autostart entry to “false” and haven’t looked back. In other words, you’ll need to have both set to “false” to “enjoy” the reduced number of FF instances.

As I began to write this, I had seven tabs open and had a max working commitment for FF of 340 megs and only one process (instance) of FF running. I don’t use anything besides the config entries to control the amount of memory FF uses, so it just goes to show YMMV.

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@bob99: I am using Waterfox, and even though there is only 1 instance of it running at any time, its memory footprint increases all the time, even with your about:config workaround implemented. So I am ‘obliged’ to use Firemin.

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